Despite a promise to reopen after a remodel, Shin Sa Dong appears to be gone for good

When Shin Sa Ding, a splashy Korean restaurant opened just over a year ago in Aurora, general manager Patrick Choi was singing the song of success. "We've had one Korean guy who's come in every day for two weeks in a row, sometimes twice a day. They keep telling me that they have nowhere else to go for Korean food -- that's the feedback that I'm getting from our repeat customers," he told me. And I was one of those repeat customers, stopping in a few times a month to satisfy my lust for kimchi, bulgogi and boiled oxen head soup.

Signage on the restaurant's exterior hints that it'll reopen after a remodel, but given the opulent interior -- bubbling fountains and cascading waterfalls, handsome dark woods and stone-cemented walls -- it's entirely unclear why a remodel would be necessary. Shin Sa Dong was easily the most stylish of the city's Korean restaurants, and it was clear from the onset that the owners had sunk a wad of coinage into making it all shiny and new.

The phone has been disconnected, too, a sign that leads us to believe that whatever "remodel" may have been in the works has since fallen by the wayside. And judging from the heap of unopened mail on the floor in the foyer, it's been quite a while since anyone stepped foot inside. Our guess is that Shin Sa Dong is done, and that would be a bummer, because Korean food is one of my favorite cuisines -- and Shin Sa Dong was one of my favorite places to get my fix.